Wall Street Journal says everyone is getting "Claude-pilled" now

America ranks dead last in AI optimism

Major newspapers discover Claude is converting the masses

The Wall Street Journal declared over the weekend that Claude is taking the AI world by storm with even non-nerds blown away, coining the term getting Claude-pilled to describe the moment when software engineers, executives, and investors witness a thinking machine of shocking capability through Anthropic's tools. The Atlantic followed with similar coverage noting that while Claude Code is technically an AI coding tool, people are using it for theater tickets, processing shopping returns, ordering DoorDash, managing personal finances, and growing plants, with one author creating a personal website in minutes without any coding experience then spinning up a dozen additional projects over the next few days. User testimonials capture the transformation, with one friend texting back "It just does stuff" after trying it, while another user compared it perfectly: ChatGPT is like a mechanic giving you advice about your car, but Claude Code is like the mechanic actually fixing it. Boris Churney, Claude Code's creator, reflected on the overnight success that was years in the making, saying the breakthrough represents just the beginning after a year of very hard work, while business leaders warned that anyone not revisiting major operating assumptions about the world is doing themselves and their dependents a massive disservice.

America embarrassingly ranks dead last in global AI optimism

Google and Ipsos survey data reveals a troubling disconnect where AI users are now the majority globally at 66% compared to just 48% in 2024 and 28% in 2023, but the United States ranks as the only country without a majority of AI users at just 40% usage rate compared to 56% in the UK, 66% in Mexico, and over 80% in UAE, Nigeria, and India. The pessimism gap proves even more concerning:

• Only 33% of US respondents expressed excitement about AI technology, representing the worst national result in the entire 21-country survey and vastly beneath the global average of 57%, while countries with high AI usage showed corresponding optimism levels reaching 70% among users and 86% among heavy users

• Americans remain evenly split on workplace disruption with 50% saying AI will create jobs versus 50% predicting elimination, though 58% favor fostering AI advancements over protecting disrupted industries, suggesting policy support despite personal hesitation about adoption that could leave the US workforce unprepared for inevitable technological transformation

This represents a major national issue beyond user numbers for tech companies—it's about societal preparedness for disruption, with concerning numbers suggesting many Americans hope to wait out the revolution and return to a world that no longer exists.

Musk demands $134 billion as his data center breaks world records

Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft escalated dramatically with his legal team quantifying damages at up to $134 billion based on his $38 million seed funding to the nonprofit in 2015, arguing he deserves a portion of OpenAI's current $500 billion valuation since early startup investors realize gains orders of magnitude greater than initial investments. "This is the only chance we have to get out from Elon... Financially, what will take me to $1 billion?" reads a particularly damaging passage from Greg Brockman's private notes revealed in court filings, while Sam Altman's counter-narrative claims Musk demanded $80 billion for a self-sustaining Mars city, majority equity control, and discussed his children controlling AGI during succession planning. Meanwhile, xAI's Colossus 2 achieved a historic milestone reaching 1 gigawatt capacity with 550,000 Blackwell GPUs, becoming the first training cluster to cross that threshold while drawing more power than San Francisco, giving Musk unprecedented compute advantage as the only company with access to this scale ahead of Anthropic's Amazon facility expected to hit 1 gigawatt in Q1 and OpenAI's Stargate coming online this summer. The trial scheduled for late April creates a massive overhang for OpenAI during what should be their pivotal year, with observers warning the courtroom drama will make everyone involved look greedy and ugly.